


Thoughts and Confusion

by Person



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, romance is complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat finally gets his candlelit hate date.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thoughts and Confusion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dimago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dimago/gifts).



Everything about Karkat was confusing to John.

 _Funny_ , a lot of it, but still confusing. The way 'hate' and 'like' were all mixed up to him, which, okay, was true for all trolls but Karkat was the only one John really got to see it out of. The way he got more pissed off when John was being friendly than he did in the rare times that he actually managed to hit a nerve and make John briefly angry with him. The way he'd complain about John's house _all_ the time but look (in the moment before he caught himself and controlled his expression) like John had suggested throwing him back through the rift if he ever pointed out that Karkat _could_ go stay with one of the others.

But the thing which was most confusing wasn't really Karkat's fault. It wasn't like it was something that he did, or something he could help, or even something that he knew about since John kept his mouth shut about it. The thing was that John _was_ straight, really. He'd spent a lot of time thinking about that after the first time it had come up, just trying to be sure, and he was completely positive that he really was. There were plenty of girls he saw that way, starting with Vriska for the one who was closest and, well, hadn't been destroyed with the Earth and moving on to a bunch of movie and TV stars and a few girls who had been in his class from there, but never a guy. John Cusack might be awesome and Howie Mandel might be hilarious but he never wanted to feel up either of their bone bulges, as one of the trolls might say. Just thinking about it made him feel embarrassed, and not in the thrilling heart-pounding sweaty palms even as he blushed like a tomato kind of way.

But the thing was, the thing _was_ , that Karkat wasn't a guy.

Okay, John knew that probably wasn't a good way to think it. If he ever said it out loud Rose would probably psychiatrist at him about how it was ridiculous of him to expect an alien species to conform to a human's ideas about the physical indicators of gender. And it wasn't like he couldn't tell which trolls were boys and which were girls when he looked at them, even if he was only just starting to pick up the signs aside from hair styles, or that didn't know that Karkat was a male troll.

But the part of John that really _noticed_ the... girliness of girls, or the fact that guys didn't have it, didn't see another boy when he looked at Karkat. Or a girl when he looked at Vriska for that matter. It saw _aliens_ , beings that were obviously people but different from humans in so many ways--a few obvious, like the teeth, but most so subtle that he couldn't pick them out in the little image Terezi had attached to her map that first gave him an idea of what trolls looked like and only found out about once he saw them in person--that his brain started having to rewrite all its rules about what it did and didn't find attractive as it worked them into his worldview.

Maybe it based its decisions on Vriska, he didn't know. All that he could say for sure was that she was the first one that he started to think was _pretty_ , pretty like those movie and TV stars and former classmates, after he'd spent weeks thinking that even though he'd still like taking her personality to a movie her looks were just so so _weird_.

But then the next one had somehow been _Eridan_ and suddenly John had a lot more to think about. Not only was he a guy troll but John didn't even _like_ him, and he didn't just mean that he didn't like-like him. He was a jerk, and not a Karkat-type of jerk where John knew what he was like but kept liking him more and more anyway. No, he was an 'avoid him as much as possible because talking to him will never be fun'-type and John didn't think that would ever change that, but somehow despite that he also started to feel like he was, well, _hot_. Which was kind of disturbing, and also made it obvious that his body wasn't just doing him a favor by starting to react to trolls that he liked.

Which made it a little bit of a relief when the last one he started to get those feelings for--the last one so far, anyway, though he couldn't be sure that he would be the last one forever--was Karkat. A relief and also very very awkward considering how things had gone the first time they'd met from Karkat's point of view. What was he supposed to say to him, that even though he was straight it turned out that he was weird enough that it didn't really matter with him, or with Eridan for some reason? Would Karkat even care about that, or had his trollish hate-want towards John been pushed aside by the human emotion called friendship? And wouldn't it make more sense just to keep his mouth shut about the whole thing and ask Vriska if she wanted to watch _The Rock_ with him someday?

Except that... he did like Vriska a lot. And when he'd first started to see how pretty she was for a troll he had figured that once they could stop worrying about the game they could try dating, if she wanted that too. But he liked Karkat _more_. A _lot_ more. And maybe it was weird that he preferred the one who hated him over the one that liked liked him, but somehow he always felt happier after an afternoon being yelled at by Karkat than after one spent laughing with Vriska.

So even though he spent a long time thinking about it, the decision about what to do was actually pretty easy. He went to Kanaya for help, deciding that even though he didn't know her that well and was pretty sure that she thought he was an idiot she was also the one most likely to help him without making fun of him or gossiping about what he'd confided in her to any of the others. Vriska had told him more than once that she could never resist a chance to meddle.

And she did help a lot, hopefully telling him the truth with her advice and not pulling a pretty mean practical joke on him. He was pretty sure she wasn't; his finely-honed pranksters instincts weren't flashing him any warnings at all and he really doubted that it was because she was like his grandma and was such a high-level prankster that she could hide her intentions from him.

She advised him on the colors of the candles and how to cut the wicks (as close to Karkat's blood color as he could find since he knew it or the grey he chose to present himself as if he felt like being polite, and tall, even though it was dangerous, the flames were supposed to be as high as their passions or something like that), what kind of food to serve (meat, mostly, highly seasoned), and how the room should be decorated ("All you really must be sure of is that there are no pails visible, unless you would like to seem overly forward."). She snuck onto Rose's computer created a new room attached to his bedroom for him to make the preparations in, walling off the door so nobody would be able to stumble in and find out what he was up to. And once everything was done he pestered Karkat to come up to his room and waited, pounding-heart and sweaty palms and all.

Karkat's eyes narrowed suspiciously after he took in the contents of the new room, which might not have been the best sign in the world, and instead of starting to yell he went very silent. John didn't know whether to feel glad he had the chance to explain himself or worry.

But he took the opening the silence gave him, rubbed the back of his head, and said, "So, uh... it turns out maybe I'm _not_ as straight as I thought, maybe. If you, um, want to try that candlelit hate date thing?"

Karkat kept _looking_ at him, not saying a word, which was strange and wrong and kind of creeped him out since at least John would know how to respond to shouting. Finally he said, "Why the hell are humans so fucking _stupid_?" which might not have seemed like a good sign to anyone who didn't know him as well as John did.

But while he said it he stepped into the room, and that told John everything he needed to know.


End file.
